Daniel A. Olivas's Books

How to Date a Flying Mexican

New and Collected Stories

By: Daniel A. Olivas

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How to Date a Flying Mexican

New and Collected Stories

By: Daniel A. Olivas

How to Date a Flying Mexican is a collection of stories derived from Chicano and Mexican culture but ranging through fascinating literary worlds of magical realism, fairy tales, fables, and dystopian futures. Many of Daniel A. Olivas’s characters confront—both directly and obliquely— questions of morality, justice, and self-determination. The collection is made up of Olivas’s favorite previously published stories, along with two new stories—one dystopian and the other magical— that challenge the Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies. How to Date a Flying Mexican draws together some of Olivas’s most unforgettable and strange tales, allowing readers to experience his very distinct, and very Chicano, fiction.

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Page Count

234

Publisher

University of Nevada Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1647790379

ISBN 13

9781647790370

The King of Lighting Fixtures

Stories

By: Daniel A. Olivas

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The King of Lighting Fixtures

Stories

By: Daniel A. Olivas

Wanderers and writers, gangbangers and lawyers, dreamers and devils. The King of Lighting Fixtures paints an idiosyncratic but honest portrait of Los Angeles, depicting how the city both entrances and confounds. Each story serves as a reflection of Daniel A. Olivas’s grand City of Angels, a “magical metropolis where dreams come true.” The characters here represent all walks of L.A. life—from Satan’s reluctant Craigslist roommate to a young girl coping with trauma at her brother’s wake—and their tales ebb and flow among various styles, including magical realism, social realism, and speculative fiction. Like a jazz album, they glide and bop, tease and illuminate, sadden and hearten as they navigate effortlessly from meta to fabulist, from flash fiction to longer, more complex narratives. These are literary sketches of a Los Angeles that will surprise, connect, and disrupt readers wherever they may live.

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Page Count

168

Publisher

University of Arizona Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

081653750X

ISBN 13

9780816537501

Chicano Frankenstein

By: Daniel A. Olivas

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Chicano Frankenstein

By: Daniel A. Olivas

A modern retelling of the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley classic that addresses issues of belonging and assimilation An unnamed paralegal, brought back to life through a controversial process, maneuvers through a near-future world that both needs and resents him. As the United States president spouts anti-reanimation rhetoric and giant pharmaceutical companies rake in profits, the man falls in love with lawyer Faustina Godínez. His world expands as he meets her network of family and friends, setting him on a course to discover his first-life history, which the reanimation process erased. With elements of science fiction, horror, political satire and romance, Chicano Frankenstein confronts our nation’s bigotries and the question of what it truly means to be human.

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Page Count

118

Publisher

Forest Avenue Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1942436602

ISBN 13

9781942436607

My Chicano Heart

New and Collected Stories of Love and Other Transgressions

By: Daniel A. Olivas

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My Chicano Heart

New and Collected Stories of Love and Other Transgressions

By: Daniel A. Olivas

My Chicano Heart is a collection of author Daniel A. Olivas’s favorite previously published tales about love, along with five new stories, that explore the complex, mysterious, and occasionally absurd machinations of people who simply want to be appreciated and treasured. Readers will encounter characters who scheme, search, and flail in settings that are sometimes fantastical and other times mundane: a man who literally gives his heart to his wife who keeps it beating safely in a wooden box; a woman who takes a long-planned trip through New Mexico but, mysteriously, without the company of her true love; a lonely man who gains a remarkably compatible roommate who may or may not be real—just to name a few of the memorable and often haunting characters who fill these pages. Olivas’s richly realized stories are frequently infused with his trademark humor, and readers will delight in—and commiserate with—his lovestruck characters. Each story is drawn from Olivas’s nearly twenty-five years of experience writing fiction deeply steeped in Chicano and Mexican culture. Some of the stories are fanciful and full of magic, while others are more realistic, and still others border on noir. All touch upon that most ephemeral and confounding of human emotions: love in all its wondrous forms.

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Page Count

261

Publisher

University of Nevada Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1647791359

ISBN 13

9781647791353

The Book of Want

By: Daniel A. Olivas

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The Book of Want

By: Daniel A. Olivas

Conchita, a Los Angeles woman in her early sixties, falls in love with her widowed neighbor, while her sister Julieta struggles to reconnect with her husband Manny, who has just learned he has a daughter with his high school girlfriend.

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Page Count

140

Publisher

University of Arizona Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0816528993

ISBN 13

9780816528998

The King of Lighting Fixtures

Stories

By: Daniel A. Olivas

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The King of Lighting Fixtures

Stories

By: Daniel A. Olivas

A collection of short stories, each reflecting Daniel Olivas' Chicano culture, a life growing up in Los Angeles, his exposure to Jewish life as a Jew-by-choice, and his experience being the parent of a gay son. The stories are character-driven, which also ebb and flow among various styles, including magical realism, social realism, and speculative fiction"--Provided by publisher.

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